Chapter 9 — Clifden

Emotional abuse

A witness, who was sent to Clifden at the age of 10 in the late 1950s and remained there until the mid-1960s, recalled good memories of one respondent, Sr Carmella. She remembered being hit by her on only one occasion. This Sister was kind to the children and the witness felt that she could talk to her. She alleged that this Sister gave her white socks to wear in order to cover bruises on her legs that she had sustained at the hands of Sr Veronica. The Congregation’s Submission following the Phase III hearings rebuts the accusation that Sr Carmella was somehow complicit in physical abuse.

The witness described another Sister, who worked on the farm, as a lovely nun. She would allow the children to eat the left-over food from the convent, which had been destined for the pigs.

At Christmas time, the children would receive a handkerchief, comb or hair slide in a brown paper bag.

They were taught singing and dancing and performed at feiseanna.

Another complainant, who was committed to Clifden for just over a year in the early 1960s when she was 12 years old, recalled one particular Sister who was kind: ‘When Sister Veronica beat us up, or Sister Roberta, and we would be sore or crying she would always put her hand on your shoulder and tell you not to cry, that everything would be okay. But everything wasn’t okay down there. Everything was bad’.

The witness also named one Sister who was fine, because she did not beat the children.

Her abiding positive memory of Clifden is spending time with the animals on the farm.

The recollection of complainants, that Clifden was a cold, cheerless environment with little emotional contact from the Sisters who worked there, is borne out by the evidence of the Sisters themselves.

The Congregation proposed that evidence should be heard from a former resident, Mary,15 who had positive memories of the Institution.

In addition, in its written Submissions to the Commission, the Congregation asked the Investigation Committee to take account of the evidence of one of the complainants, who was committed to Clifden at the age of eight in 1966 and remained there for a year and a half, and who it asserts was a reliable witness and ‘showed balance and emotional closure or maturity in the way he described life in the school’.

Mary was committed to Clifden when she was two years old, in the late 1940s, and remained there until the mid-1960s.

She was part of a group of children known as the ‘specials’. These were children who were considered delicate and they were given a special supplementary diet. Every day at 11am, they were taken out of school and given an egg-flip and cod liver oil. As she got older, she was chosen to run errands down in the village.

She accepted that at times some children were hungry. For breakfast, they had two slices of buttered bread with tea. At lunchtime, they had potatoes and vegetables. During school term, they had porridge every day at 3pm in the back yard. They had bread with butter and jam for supper. On Sunday, they had bacon and cabbage. They had dessert three times a week. They always used delph and cutlery and never ate with their hands, as was alleged by one complainant.

The witness did not accept that children ate food from the pigs’ buckets as a regular occurrence. Once or twice a year, when nuns were finally professed, the children were given food left over from the visitors: you know, they would bring the food that was left over from all their visitors, we would have to – there would be a few people who would have to carry it out, so they would bring it down the walk and they would put it down and we would all go into it. But that was not something that was daily or weekly or thing, absolutely, that’s not true.

She said that they occasionally stole bread from the bakery, but this was more out of devilment than hunger. Sr Gina16 supervised meals, and there was no bullying over food at mealtimes: Clifden was very regimented and everything had to be done in order, because don’t forget there was so many of us.